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Singed Feathers

Last night, I took my Moonkin specced Druid into the Firelands, to join Team Teddybear (and friends) in a spontaneous clearing of trash.

I know, right? My Moonkin spec is active one day and I’m managing Eclipses against Firelands trash.

Ahem. A little trial by fire.

/ducks

So fun, though. Playing on my main is really so much more satisfying than on alts. If given the choice, I’d always be on my main, and I’m being given the choice.

You see that up there? What that spider is doing to the head of that Hawk… that ain’t right.

Now, taking on the Firelands bosses may seem daunting, but let me tell you, killing the trash is well within a raiding team’s capability. If your raid has been able to successfully down most of the current bosses prior to the Nefarian and Council fights, then you can do eet.

Why would you want to? Well, this is the ICC rep raid of the expansion. Farming trash mobs gives you reputation with the Avengers of Hyjal, and at each rank you gain access to some truly sweet gear purchased with minimal gold.

At Friendly, you get an option of very, very nice cloaks, at Honored there are Belts, and so on.

The cloaks look cool, too. The bottoms are rounded and the pattern is very fancy, not that how they look makes a difference to anyone. Er, anyone else. Hmm. Looking good, Captain Shakespeare, looking mighty good.

We went in and cleared trash under Matheos leadership, and after just three clears/resets, everyone in the raid was Friendly and had some new cloaks.

We also averaged one BoE epic drop per trash run. Each of the firs two runs, a BoE item dropped, and the third time it was a Leatherworking recipe. A one handed Strength axe and a Strength/Expertise necklace.

Would it be worth stopping your normal raids to go farm trash? I don’t think so. Personally, I’d prefer to do all the current raids until they were well and fully nailed down if I hadn’t already, and then move on to Firelands. It’s not going anywhere.

At the same time, if you miss the days of pug raids forming to do IceCrown Citadel, then you should be delighted to hear that they’re back, at least as far as trash clearing goes.

I don’t like doing spoilers, but there were a few things I wanted to mention about Firelands that I think won’t ruin anything.

First, it feels much better than Molten Core, or other underground raids. Having it be totally open to the sky, with fiery meteors hurtling to the ground and blazing Hawks circling overhead adds a sense of being exposed to scrutiny, with the freedom to move around.

Gazing across the vast landscape truly feels like you’re venturing into another world.

Second, this may surprise you, but the trash encounters are more forgiving than the early run up to the first boss in ICC.

In ICC, you had a narrow channel you had to go down, and there were traps that would activate the giants (that were instant raid wipes in the early days if you popped them while other trash was still alive), and there were masses of things to web your party, and all sorts of other fun stuff.

In Firelands, it’s very open. If you are careful, you can pull each different group or single individual without getting extras, and without getting knocked back into other mobs. If you charge straight in like a bunch of billy badasses, well, that’s not the fault of the design team.

The Molten Lords are two tank fights, where each tank wants to swap lead whenever they reach 3 stacks of the debuff. The rest of the group wants to watch for a little powder-puff of flame under their feet, it signals an impending eruption of boom. Not too bad, not an instant kill or even all that damaging, but do you really want to stand in the bad if you can avoid it by paying attention?

The groups of 5 salamanders are designed to test your groups CC. There are two (or three) casters that WILL chain heal the rest… hey, this shouldn’t surprise anyone that’s done Molten Core before. Since we CC’ed three of the Salamanders, I can’t tell you how many were casters, but it’s an easy fight if you get your CC off and keep on it while the first two get burned down.

The turtles and the hellhound patrols… we avoided those. Matheo said they are bad news, and there is plenty of trash to kill without having to worry about them. We did pull one group of turtles, and you know, they were pretty tough. We ran out like little girls, in the finest traditions of raiders tired of repair bills everywhere.

Really, it was just fun. I was expecting to continue Hyjal questing to unlock the Firelands dailies, and ended up having a very fun night of raiding instead.

It helps that the mobs patrol everywhere, and you’ve got freedom to move where you want as you go. They’re spread out a bit, and while some paths overlap each other, well, that’s what Silencing moves are for, to drag ’em, right?

Anyway, what I’m saying here is that if you’ve got solid heroic gear, and you put in the effort to get crafted epics made for your character, and you’ve been doing some Troll dungeons and got your shiny new Justice gear wearing a hole in your pockets, well, why not look for some Firelands trash clearing pugs, and have yourself a great time?

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7 thoughts on “Singed Feathers”

There is NOTHING like having a couple of turtles treat you as their own personal ping-pong ball to keep you humble. There should be an achievement for most bounces without touching the ground (or dying.)

We lost our shadow priest over the side on the first molten lord because they couldn’t see the fiery poufs of boom. Oops.

Then we killed a corehound and stared suspiciously at the smouldering corpse for a while waiting for a boom, but nothing ever happened.

Playing on your main IS much more satisfying! I just, as in Tuesday night, resubbed my 6-year old account. My experiment of starting all over with a new account failed. The past few months have been fun, especially playing as a newb through most of the revamped zones. But oh what sweet relief to logon and play my level 85 Mama Druid.

She stepped foot in Hyjal at level 80, but only for a brief moment to check out what the druids were up to. So I have to quest through the zone to access the new dailies. By the by, I should let you know that I chose to level her in waterworld after reading your post about how awesome the zone is for druids. I had the time of my life playing in the water and leaping and bounding on the sea floor!! Your screenshot of doing the latter in bear form was particularly instrumental in this decision. =D

Anyhow, I quested up through restoring Goldinn’s shrine and went from Neutral to Honored with Guardians of Hyjal. In just one night. I had to quest through two entire zones to get honored with The Earthen Ring! Has there been an increase to faction rep gains, or were there just not very many Earthen Ring quest givers? I don’t mind. I was able to upgrade a few pieces last night.

So, I just sorta went off on a tangent there. I basically wanted to comment to add a “Me Too!” with regards to playing your main. I’m gonna take it easy on the alts for a bit. I have a lot to do on Mama Druid!

I would also like you to know that, coming from the perspective of a full-time working parent, your recent posts about end game content are appreciated. While I will be more likely to pug it when the time comes (as opposed to leaving my level 2.5 family/friends guild), I am glad to know that the content is accessible and experienceable (yay, a new word!) to players with schedules such as ourselves. Thank you for that.

I got dragged into a guild trash run for the first time last night, and it was the most fun I’ve had for ages. Our only drop was a LW recipe, but the encounters were not as hard as I had feared, and our mostly-inexperienced group coped really well, only wiping a couple of times. I loved the atmosphere – of the place – like Molten Core but with a great feeling of space – I can’t wait to do it again.

I have not stepped into firelands yet on my main(blood dk) but have watched my wife down trash and the first boss and I am excited to test my skill. Although as some have mentioned the worry of firelands getting old quick and having nothing to do I am the opposite since I have stepped into the world of bear tanking. I just hope to be able to do tirelands on both tanks before having. To learn something. New again.